Conservation, public lands, and outdoor recreation

My research analyzes the economics of public lands and rural communities, the outdoor recreation economy, and approaches to conservation funding. 

public lands and rural communities

National monuments are protected federal lands that are home to scientific, cultural and historic resources. They have been fraught with conflict and controversy over the years (evidence: President Trump’s recent order reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah by 2 million acres and the ensuing court case). Using longitudinal data on all individual business establishments in the 8-state Mountain West region from 1990 through 2015, my coauthors and I conducted a difference-in-differences regression analysis of the impacts of national monument designations on local economic growth. Key findings: monuments appear to help, not hurt, local economies. Article published in Science Advances, March 18, 2020. Also a Resources magazine article (written by my colleagues and with some cool graphics) and an easy-listening (I promise!) podcast. This study has received some press attention—the best stories are in The Salt Lake Tribune and Popular Science.

In this blog post, I discuss the “outdoor recreation economy” movement and the implications for public lands funding and management. Eleven states have newly-established outdoor recreation offices or task forces that are designed to promote economic development around the outdoor recreation industry. As the industry grows and communities benefit economically, they need to consider how to “pay back” the public lands they rely on.

National parks

In a January 2019 Resources Radio podcast, I talk about some of the problems the U.S. national park system is facing, including funding shortfalls and overcrowding. I discuss some of the proposals for how to solve these problems, including dedicated funds from oil and gas leases on public lands, increased entrance fees to the parks, and more.

Casey Wichman, Kevin Ankney, and I analyzed the voluminous data available from the government’s recreation.gov website, where people go to make reservations for activities on public lands. In an RFF report, “Nature-based Recreation: Understanding Campsite Reservations in National Parks,” we document the congestion in national parks at particular times of year, show how far people drive to go camping in parks, how long they stay, and say a bit about the socio-demographic makeup.

In a May 2019 blog post, Reyna Askew and I write about the lack of diversity among visitors to national parks and other public lands. We talk about the financial, historical, and cultural reasons why people of color may not be recreating on public lands. We offer two policy proposals but also caution that diversity initiatives need to be developed in tandem with the communities they are designed to serve.

parks and conservation funding

Federal land management agencies in the U.S., including the National Park Service, are chronically underfunded. A special issue of the journal Land Economics, coming out online in December 2021, will include several papers evaluating dedicated funding options. My paper, coauthored with Matt Ashenfarb, analyzes an excise tax on outdoor recreation equipment. You can read the working paper version here. We find that a 5 percent tax would raise about $4.6 billion per year, more than the Park Service budget of $3.2 billion but less than all four public lands agencies combined. We find that the tax would cause a relatively modest welfare loss per dollar of revenue raised but would have some inequities — it imposes the largest burden on the lowest income households.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) provides funding for federal, state, and local parks using revenues from offshore oil and gas leases. I’ve written many times about LWCF, which has accomplished a lot for parks and conservation over its 55-year history. This RFF Explainer provides good background and current context for the program, which got a good boost in 2020 from passage of the Great America Outdoors Act. This interview I did of Senator Maria Cantwell talks about the new law.

General appropriations funding for state and local parks has declined over the years. In its place has been an increase in user fees, philanthropy (especially in cities), and a variety of different kinds of dedicated taxes and fees. I am skeptical of philanthropy; it works in big cities with a lot of wealthy residents (think New York City) but has several drawbacks. I wrote about the pros and cons in this RFF Issue Brief.

This RFF report evaluates alternative funding options for state parks, spotlighting a few states that have developed robust options (I’m looking at you, Michigan). In this article in Parks and Recreation magazine, and building off the RFF report, I describe alternative dedicated funding approaches for state parks.

values, benefits, and ecosystem services

In an article in Land Economics (coauthored with Jessica Chu and Carolyn Kousky), “Is What You See What You Get? The Value of Natural Landscape Views,” I use hedonic property value techniques to estimate the value of nature views (ungated version of paper available here). In an earlier paper in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, “The Tradeoff between Private Lots and Public Open Space in Subdivisions at the Urban-Rural Fringe,” Elizabeth Kopits, Virginia McConnell and I assessed how homebuyers value subdivision open space vis-a-vis their own private lot space (ungated version available here). With coauthors, I estimated costs and benefits of floodplain conservation in two settings; those papers are described on the “Hurricanes, flooding, and climate resilience” research page.

In a Water Economics and Policy article with Yusuke Kuwayama, “Evaluating Payments for Watershed Services Programs in the United States,” we describe 15 programs in the U.S. that use a payment for ecosystem services type program to protect forests and other natural lands to provide clean drinking water and surface water, flood attenuation, and other water-related services. One message from our paper: these programs need better data, monitoring, reporting, and measurement to evaluate whether they are working as they should.

A current project, joint with Leonard Shabman, is assessing the economics of dam removal. The United States has hundreds of thousands of dams, many of them aging and in need of costly repairs. Removing them can restore rivers to their natural state, improve water quality, aquatic habitat, and diadromous fish passage. Yet there are many impediments to removal—institutional, regulatory, and funding-related impediments. In this project, to be completed in early Fall 2020, we are identifying these impediments and creative solutions for overcoming them.